


What's Left Now

by kam



Series: MCU Drabbles [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, tw: child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:57:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3854926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kam/pseuds/kam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>modern au where bucky has nightmares and steve won't leave him alone with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Left Now

**Author's Note:**

> [vaguely inspired by this](http://maxkennedy24.tumblr.com/post/115673462867)  
>  like, not really i guess but that's the image i had of them in my head while i was writing.

It’s cliché, isn’t it? It’s such a fucking cliché. I fell in love with his smile. God, the way it lights up his face. He’s handsome enough, don’t get me wrong. At least, I think so. But his smile. His eyes crinkle up at the corners, his teeth flash, and he just looks so damn happy. Nothing can hurt him, not when he smiles like that. Nothing can hurt you, when he smiles at you.

The nightmares aren’t so bad, most nights. They’re just… Vague, I guess. Like, shapes and sounds and colours, and I know something is happening but I don’t know what, so it’s not as bad. Some nights, though, it’s painfully clear. Fucking crystal. I can see and hear and feel everything, and those are the nights I wake up screaming, reaching out blindly, digging my nails into whatever I can reach. More often than not, it’s Steve fucking Rogers, because he won’t fucking listen when I tell him to get out of the way if I start up. Says he’d rather take a few scratches than leave me alone. Says he’d rather take anything than leave me alone.

My therapist makes it out like some kind of fucking war crime, you know? She’s so convinced, every session, that we’re gonna have this miraculous breakthrough, that I’ll realise, that I’ll break down sobbing or something, ‘let it out’, and then it’ll be ok. Look, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t even go. But Steve says I should, and what am I gonna say to that? No? Like I could ever tell him no.

It’s been fifteen years, and it hasn’t happened yet.

It wasn’t, so you know. A war crime, or whatever. Worse things happen every day. To lots of people. Little kids. You know? Like, they make such a big deal of it here, but there, it’s understood. People do what they can, and that goes as far as it goes. The words are hard to get out, harder around her. Not about what happened. About what’s left from it now.

“Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” they call it here. I had to look the words up online – I knew ‘stress’ and ‘disorder’ but what the fuck is ‘posttraumatic’? It’s a fucking holdover from German, is what it is, where they’ll string seven or eight words together and just call it one. ‘After trauma.’ Whatever. Call it what you want. The nightmares aren’t so bad.

 

It’s not real. I know, I fucking know it’s not real. I’m not seven, I’m twenty-three. I’m not lying on a piss-stained mattress with two other kids, I’m on this foofy memory foam mattress with Steve. In New York. Not Tomsk. I’m nowhere fucking near Tomsk, haven’t been in fifteen fucking years, but that doesn’t matter. It helps, a little, to know it’s not real. But it’s not real, which means there are no rules.

Kolya fucking wet the bed again. God, I can fucking feel it. It’s warm at first, but it’s already turning cold – it’s always so fucking cold. He’s still sleeping – good. Dmitri sleeps like the dead anyway, nothing will wake him up. It’s just me, so I gather the sheet up, slipping off the mattress and padding silently down the row of cots to the little washroom. There’s no light, just the moon outside the grimy window, but I know exactly what I’m doing, can do it by touch alone.

“Yasha!”

It’s a hiss at first, one that I know Piotr will pay for tomorrow. A warning. I can feel the water cold on my hands. This is not a dream. This is too real. She’s got my arm, fingers so tight, and my hand goes numb and the sheet falls into the sink.

“What are you doing, little Yasha? Why are you out of bed so late?”

It is almost fucking sweet, the way she says my name. Like my mother – my real mother, not this fat woman who makes us call her Matushka and gives us little and feeds us less, who marks our skin with bruises and reminds us always of how much she loves us.

“The sheet was dirty,”

my voice is tiny, young and scared, and she coos, tracing a gentle finger down my cheek.

“Did you wet the fucking bed again, you little piece of shit? Did you? It’s always fucking something with you lot, isn’t it? I can’t have a moment’s peace, always this one falling down or that one hungry or you wetting the fucking bed, little Yasha. You nasty little fuck. I should turn you out on the street, see how long you last there. Your piss would freeze to you in the night, and you’d wake up with your cock stuck to your leg."

I want to tell her that I wouldn't, that I haven't wet the fucking bed in years. Not since before I came here. But Kolya is only five and I'm not gonna fucking let her touch him, not if I can help it.

“Get this shit out of my sink. That’s filthy. Fucking disgusting. Take it back to bed. You wet it, now you can fucking sleep under it. Go!”

I’ve made the mistake of trying to wring the water from the sheet, and this earns me a smack that has my ears ringing. Another one follows as I trip over the sheet, slamming me into the basin, driving the air from my lungs. A third knocks my head into the tap, and I feel something too warm to be water trickle down my face. I’ll never make it back. She’ll keep me here, cornered, and hit me, batter me against the unforgiving steel until I die. I will die here, like this, with the wet sheet balled to my chest, still smelling of urine. Kolya is crying. My head aches, and my cheek burns. I am going to die.

 

“Bucky! Bucky, baby, wake up. Come on, that’s it. Come here. You’re ok. Sh. It’s ok.”

As he’s pulling me close, my elbow connects with his cheek and he winces but doesn’t let go, nuzzling into my hair once he has me in his lap.

“C’mon, Voz. You’re ok. It was just a dream. We’re in Brooklyn. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

Unclenching my fists enough to extract my fingernails from my palms is a slow process, and I let out a string of curses as I do – Steve understands enough of what I’m saying to blush warm against my forehead.

“You’ve got a mouth on you, Voz. Hey,”

he dips his head down, pressing a kiss to my cheek.

“You’re safe now, hear me? Bucky, look at me. You’re safe. Say it.”

“’M safe,”

I mumble, turning to press my face into his neck. He smells so fucking good, he smells warm and sleepy and he tastes that way, too, when I open my mouth to lick at his pulse, just once. Maybe twice. To make sure. He tastes like Steve. He’s real – this is real.

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes. I’m twenty-three. I’m in Brooklyn, New York. It’s… Fuck, it’s April? April. I’m safe,”

I recite it all, because I know he needs me to – I swear it helps him more than it helps me, though my breathing does feel a little steadier now. Maybe my heart is a little slower. I wouldn’t know.

“Look at me, Voz,”

when I turn my face up to his, he’s smiling that beautiful, heart-melting smile, and I can’t help but kiss him. I fell in love with that smile. Because when he smiles at me like that, I swear to God, I honestly believe that nothing can hurt me. That I’m safe.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: 'voz' is short for 'возлюбленный' (which google translate assures me is pronounced 'vozlyublennyy' and means lover or sweetheart or that kind of thing.) the more you know!


End file.
